Oshaberi

The Backstory

A group of friends had long socialized on the web through means of IRC, forums and mailing lists. United by common interests, this group formed a channel on FreeNode. FreeNode was the home of these friends for many years, serving their needs well; as time progressed, a need for finely-grained control arose as their knowlege of computing and familiarity with administration increased.

The Formation

In September of 2013 the seed of oshaberi was sown when the idea of running an IRC network was found to be an appealing alternative to using one ran by another group. Many issues were brought forth by the idea; the primary points of interest were: the name, the setup, the rules, and the -tan.

The Name

Many names were suggested, and a pool was formed that included options such as robolita, nyetnyet.net, chinmusic, saunternet, blagolith, stenoweb.net, and dahizzle.biz. After a few days of deliberation "oshaberi" was decided upon, with the intention of getting a domain name in the Japanese top level domain; soon many members pitched in, and tsundoku was more than happy to procure the goods.

"oshaberi" was choosen due to it's meaning; "chattering, talk, or idle talk" aptly describes the purpose of this network. Discussion about technology, media, current events, the geoplitical state of the world, everday trivialities or chat among an already established community like the 68kmla. Oshaberi's founders wish to replicate the feeling of what it is to "hang out"; doing everything, yet nothing at all with a close group of associates.

The Setup

With a name in hand, it was time to decide upon the network's implementation. This happened in primarily three parts, choosing the ircd, the network map and deciding if services were neccesary. There are many choices available for an IRCd, choosing one seemed an almost daunting task until Ulterior suggested UnrealIRCd. Unreal's featureset, ease of use and Ulterior's previous experience supplied much weight to his suggestion, and Unreal was accepted as oshaber's IRCd.

Oshaberi's original network map used a server called "glinda" as the hub, with stenoweb.net and irc.tsundoku.ne.jp linking to it. Glinda was hosted on Ulterior's home connection, and while a more than capable machine for running the IRCd, it's ISP was less than satisfactory. Soon, stenoweb.net replaced glinda as the hub, having irc.tsundoku.ne.jp linked ad a leaf, and dillamond.680x0.com linked as a hub; dillamond.680x0.com has a security server linked to it, scanning incoming connections network-wide.